Tuesday, November 8, 2016

With the election upon us, I wanted to get my thoughts and
recommendations in before the polls open nationwide. The presidential race may
be sucking up most of the oxygen in the room, but down ballot races and
measures are just as important. It’s still crucial to keep the unqualified demagogue
that is Donald Trump out of the White House, and to not assume that if things
got bad enough under him it would trigger the revolution we need. Sometimes the
lesser evil really is the lesser evil, and third parties would do better to
build more from the bottom up. But the chief executive can only do so much
without the support of the legislature, so you shouldn’t forget to vote down
ballot wherever you are.

As a progressive, I want to elect the most progressive
Senate candidate, and that is Kamala Harris. As for State Assembly, I once
interned for Sandré Swanson, however he and Nancy Skinner are both decent
candidates, so I could recommend either one.

With so many measures to vote on, I believe these ones are
worth going into in depth:

Opponents have called California’s Prop 56—a tobacco tax—a
giveaway to insurance companies. But the tobacco industry is the one pushing
that argument to defeat it, so the proposition deserves a yes vote.

One of the arguably more confusing ballot measures in
California is Prop 61, designed to lower drug prices, but opponents charge it
will raise them instead.With so many
organizations and ads on each side, and many progressive organizations taking
no position, it can be hard for progressives to decide. Personally it seems like
the possibility of higher prices is more of a blackmail threat from Big Pharma
than an inherent consequence, so my recommendation is to vote yes.

There may also be confusion about Oakland’s Measure HH, the
soda tax, which opponents have labeled a grocery tax. The beverage industry is
the main funder of the opposition, so we shouldn’t let them fool us. I
recommend a yes vote.

These links offer progressive recommendations for the
various statewide measures: